Not many of us found Nooks in our stockings, judging from Barnes & Noble sales

The New York book retailer, which operates 689 Barnes & Noble bookstores and 674 college bookstores, said sales at its bookstores and online business fell 10.9 percent from a year ago to $1.2 billion, dragged down by an 8.2 percent decline in comparable store sales, store closures and lower online sales.

Core comparable store sales, which exclude sales of Nook products, decreased 3.1 percent due to lower bookstore traffic, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) said. Sales of Nook products in bookstores and online declined during the holiday period due to lower unit volume and average selling prices.

Revenue at the company’s Nook segment, which includes the e-readers, digital content and accessories, fell 12.6 percent to $311 million during the holiday period. Although unit sales of the e-reader fell from a year ago, digital content sales rose 13.1 percent. Digital content sales include digital books, digital newsstand, and the apps business.

While retail sales of Nook products fell short of expectations, the company said bookstore sales of core products exceeded its expectations, and therefore, it continues to expect fiscal year 2013 retail comparable bookstore sales to decline on a percentage basis in the low- to mid-single digits.

"We entered the holiday with two great new products, Nook HD and Nook HD+, both highly rated media tablets of phenomenal quality," Chief Executive William Lynch said in a statement. "Nook device sales got off to a good start over the Black Friday period, but then fell short of expectations for the balance of holiday. We are examining the root cause of the December shortfall in sales, and will adjust our strategies accordingly going forward."

As a result of the Nook sales shortfall, the company now expects fiscal year 2013 Nook Media revenue of about $3 billion, and Nook segment EBITDA losses at a comparable level to fiscal year 2012.

Barnes & Noble, which has made significant investments over the past three years building its Nook digital retailing platform, said its “digital strategy will continue to center around delivering the best digital reading, shopping and content experience in the market, while also being diligent about calibrating expenses to business trends in order to scale the business to profitability over time.”

Barnes & Noble last week announced that British publishing company Pearson was taking a 5 percent stake in the Nook business for $89.5 million. Microsoft Corp. in April bought a 16.8 percent in Nook for $300 million.

The company plans to report its second quarter results around Feb. 19.